So Long

Lucky me. I get to live just long enough to witness history in the making…the dismantling of the America Democratic  system of government. Back in the beginning of this system the ingenious concept of ‘checks and balances’ was established. That and the idea that we would have a government reliant on the rule of law. As we all know, these two things are the glue that holds it all together. The integrity of these is only as strong as the integrity of our elected leaders and representatives who operate within the system. I don’t see any integrity at all. This is not a Republican or Democrat problem, it’s collectively our problem. The worst part is our acceptance of it. We watch like ’deer in the headlights’ as it happens. With the intelligence of said deer. This reminds me of the lines in the Paul Simon song, An American Tune –

“And I dreamed I was flying, and high up above my eyes could clearly see

The statue of liberty, sailing away to sea, and I dreamed I was flying”

So long Lady Liberty it’s been good to know you, for a fleeting moment in history.

America by Allen Ginsberg

America

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.

America two dollars and twentyseven cents January

17, 1956.

I can't stand my own mind.

America when will we end the human war?

Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.

I don't feel good don't bother me.

I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.

America when will you be angelic?

When will you take off your clothes?

When will you look at yourself through the grave?

When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?

America why are your libraries full of tears?

America when will you send your eggs to India?

I'm sick of your insane demands.

When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I

need with my good looks?

America after all it is you and I who are perfect not

the next world.

Your machinery is too much for me.

You made me want to be a saint.

There must be some other way to settle this argument.

Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back

it's sinister.

Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical

joke?

I'm trying to come to the point.

I refuse to give up my obsession.

America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.

America the plum blossoms are falling.

I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday

somebody goes on trial for murder.

America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.

America I used to be a communist when I was a kid

I'm not sorry.

I smoke marijuana every chance I get.

I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses

in the closet.

When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.

My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.

You should have seen me reading Marx.

My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.

I won't say the Lord's Prayer.

I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.

America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle

Max after he came over from Russia.

I'm addressing you.

Are you going to let your emotional life be run by

Time Magazine?

I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.

I read it every week.

Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner

candystore.

I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.

It's always telling me about responsibility. Business-

men are serious. Movie producers are serious.

Everybody's serious but me.

It occurs to me that I am America.

I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.

I haven't got a chinaman's chance.

I'd better consider my national resources.

My national resources consist of two joints of

marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable

private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour

and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.

I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of

underprivileged who live in my flowerpots

under the light of five hundred suns.

I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers

is the next to go.

My ambition is to be President despite the fact that

I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly

mood?

I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as

individual as his automobiles more so they're

all different sexes.

America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500

down on your old strophe

America free Tom Mooney

America save the Spanish Loyalists

America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die

America I am the Scottsboro boys.

America when I was seven momma took me to Com-

munist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a

handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the

speeches were free everybody was angelic and

sentimental about the workers it was all so sin-

cere you have no idea what a good thing the

party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand

old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me

cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody

must have been a spy.

America you don't really want to go to war.

America it's them bad Russians.

Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen.

And them Russians.

The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power

mad. She wants to take our cars from out our

garages.

Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers'

Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia.

Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta-

tions.

That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read.

Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us

all work sixteen hours a day. Help.

America this is quite serious.

America this is the impression I get from looking in

the television set.

America is this correct?

I'd better get right down to the job.

It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes

in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and

psychopathic anyway.

America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

- Berkeley, January 17, 1956

And Death Shall Have No Dominion by Dylan Thomas

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashore;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Through they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

Keith Emerson - Close to Home

So long, Keith Emerson, you were the best!

Sylvia Plath reads Plath

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.
Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays.

    Ralph Waldo Emerson

Call each thing by its right name...

If you're black, white, asian, arabic or whatever I have some advice that will serve you well. Don't be an asshole! Looters and arsonists are assholes. Unfortunately these people overshadow the regular Americans who feel slighted, right or wrong, who want to bring attention to a potential problem. So now I have to endure the endless stories or articles backing up particular individual's contention that all members of a group are the same. Generalizations are the tool of lazy thinkers who are mired in their own obtuseness. At least have the courage to admit to others or even yourself that you don't care too much for an ethnic group as a whole. I know that anyway, but I don't give a shit, you're the one who has to reconcile that with your conscience or your god. So instead of playing passive aggressive head games, hinting at who you really are, try evolving and join the enlightened.